“They’re up on the deck, holding Hen and Rokha. Your father was awarded 3 years of your labour in return for the 30,000 credits you stole from him,” Zee said, sounding … spiteful?

“The EMBers will free Hen and Rokha when they get you, Kosi,” she added like she’d decided something.

I sat up in a hurry. My head connected to the ceiling, thunk. “Ouch! I only took a hundred credits!” My heart thudded nearly in my throat. Zee seemed to be saying I should just go and give myself into the EMBers’ hands?

“Thirty thousand is probably what it cost your father to hire Hen,” Jack said. “You’re trying to influence her, Zee. Unfair. What about me?”

“Rokha reminded them that you’re a licensed Fetcher.”

“Hurry up, girl,” a stranger called from the deck.

“You all have already decided what my mind has got to be?” I said. I trembled hard enough that the bunks shook. Thankfully Du did not wake up.

“Not me,” Jack said. He put his hand on my arm to keep me company. “But Zee is Hen’s daughter in the same way that you are. And she went with Hen to find Du,” he said softly.

I cried. “How could I help not being there?”

“Hen said what you decide to do is up to you alone,” Zee said grudgingly.

Typical Hen, I thought. Always training me for my future. Behind me, Du slept on, snuffling like a little rabbit into the pillow. My little sister, too young to live without Hen.

I got my voice steadied. “I’m glad we went to bed with our clothes on.” Even Zee, though she was years older than me, was apparently was too young to live without Hen.

I swung onto the ladder and pulled my pillow around in front of Du to stop her rolling over the edge of the bunk.

“It’s my decision as we just said,” Jack said. “Kosi has got a much better chance of getting away with me there. A Fetcher will always know more byways than the uppity Earth Maintenance and Base engineers. And I have studied the byways diligently, as you will know.”

Zee stayed in the bunkroom to be with Du when she woke. “Go up the forward ladder-stair. Maybe you won’t be grabbed as you come out of the hatch.”

Jack went first.

Two of the EMBers were women. One each held Hen and Rokha. The lone man threatened us with a taser on a stick.

Saturday, May 5, 2018

Du ushered us through a door under a ladder-stair. She took her thumb out of her mouth long enough to say, “This way into the kitchen.”

Jack frowned my smile at Du’s self-importance from my face. “This is the forward ladder to the forward deck,” he said, maybe to make up.

Plugged up again, Du silently pointed out the sink, stove and fridge all in a row along the left.

I gazed over the long narrow window over the top, covered with a strip of yellow fabric. Small door in the nose of the boat. At the right, a U shaped bench around a table. Yellow tea-towel cloth serving as tablecloth lay diagonally across the tabletop. A single decorative object in the middle. A matching tea towel curtained window.

The sink was deep. The stove was enclosed in a cage presumably so that pots and pans couldn’t fall off when the boat was moving. A fridge next to that. I laughed inside because Hen had described her house to me, without me knowing, in a story. I puzzled about the curtains here and in the front room. Hen hated shutting out the sky.

Oh yes. The boat was tied up along the plank-way. “The curtains are so people can’t see in?”

“I reckon,” Jack said. “What we’re going to do now is … um … have some supper. You two sit at the table and I’ll see if I remember everything. You tell me if I don’t, Du.”

I slid onto the bench. This kitchen was how I knew it was Hen’s place. She loved plain and everything in its place. One decorative object to meditate on, in this case a bit of grainy wood in the middle of the table. I blinked and blinked. I couldn’t cry, I had found her again when she wasn’t mine anymore.

Then I thought, silly me. I remembered one of Hen’s mottos. I let the rest of my tears slide down inside me, down my throat. People belong to themselves first and foremost. Hen belongs to herself. Something she would be telling Du before long.

Du climbed up beside me. “First the placemats,” she said.

“You find them,” Jack said. “Three places.”

“We’re eating alone?” I said.

“We’re together,” he said with a look toward Du counting out placemats from a purpose-made slot in the bench-back. “I’ll tell you later.”

“Later alligator,” Du said, sitting back down and sliding the placemats in place. “Spoons? For soup?”

“Yeah, I can do that,” Jack said. “Boat is lying still,” he explained. He found a jar of soup in the refrigerator. Was there always soup, I wondered? He poured it into a pot on the stove. Lit a place underneath the pot with a real flame.

“A blue flame! I never saw fire except for a yellow candle flame,” I said. “What’s it burning?”

“Some kind of gas, in a really really strong steel bottle kept under the stove.”

Du dug in my ribs with a pointy finger. “Soup bowls,” she said.

“What?”

“Soup bowls, in the seat back. Show you?” she offered.

I kneeled up on the seat. Du was there before me, walking on the seat. She put her finger in a hole in the panelling and lifted it. A deep purpose-made box held the bowls. I handed her three, one by one. Slotted the panel back. The whole back of the seat held compartments. Each panel had on it an image of the thing it contained.

Jack poured luke-warm soup into our bowls. He shrugged, glancing at Du. It couldn’t be too hot, he meant. I was so hungry I didn’t care. Only that it had real baby carrots in it. “Where …?”

Jack shook his head.

Probably he thought I was going to ask where Hen was. “Where does Hen get these carrots from?” I said.

“From the boat market,” Du said. “The boats come from a long long way where they grow things. And where the ducks are.” Her mouth trembled.

Jack hissed.

I nodded. Guilty as charged. I’d have to try harder to be a nice big sister. “What about a drink?” I said. “Are there cups for water in this seat?”

Du brightened. She leapt up and handed me cups, one by one, as she got them from a further slot.

Washing up was more of the same with Du putting everything back, one by one. Jack took us to the bathroom. “You’re sisters. Get yourself ready for bed.”

Very crafty.

“Shower-baths are not in my routine,” Du said primly.

Hen-and-Du already had a routine? The envy-animal in me licked its lips with a green tongue. How many days since Hen found her? I pressed the envy-animal down.

“What about you show me your routine?” I helped her wash her face and hands the way Hen used to help me. Washed my own. Borrowed Du’s toothbrush.

Jack had the bunkroom door open. “I’m thinking it would be better for anyone coming in late, like Zee and Rokha, if we all slept on the top bunks. Du near the wall of the boat, you in front of her. It’s quite wide, that bunk. I’ll go at right angles to you. Near your head. To talk,” he mouthed at the end.

Du stopped complaining when Jack said of course no undressing, and guided her up the ladder. I followed her up and arranged her pillow. Jack went to the bathroom. I made myself comfortable to wait.

Friday, April 6, 2018

The narrator, upon searching for images of houseboats, discovered she favours vintage Dutch barges. Probably because they featured in the stories of her childhood, and even stayed over in a leaky barge that was kept on land.

“This one,” Jack said.

I started running because I saw Hen with a small person clinging to her side. “Du?” I called, planning where I’d put my feet once I was on the deck. I couldn’t fall now.

Hen and Du stood in the shadows under an awning in the middle of a deck crowded with stuff. Coils of rope. Sausages of rolled up fabric (sails?) Bits and pieces of all kinds of materials.

Jack pulled at my shirt. Same handful. “Watch it,” he said.

I looked where he pointed. The edge of the plank-way trembled under my feet. Next step was in a gap a metre wide. Dark green water. “Deep?”

“You bet. That black siding is the hull of the boat. We need to get on board over there.” He led, dragging me by my hand as though I was the little sister. I promised both him and me silently, only where boats and water are concerned, Jacqui-Jack.

A walkway connected the plank-way with the boat’s side. Our feet thumping onto the walkway vibrated the walkway. We jumped down on a plank deck, thud, which vibrated under me with a deeper note. I walked toward Hen, didn’t run, there was just too much unfamiliar gear on the deck.

Hen pulled me and Jack under the tent with her. Hugged me. “I’m so very happy to see you, Kosi Lionhair!”She hugged Jack. “You’re a champion, Jack Fetcher!”

Jack grinned.

The little person, who was Du, pulled at Hen’s clothes. “Me! Me am a champion too?” she said.

Du stuck her thumb in her mouth and looked at Jack and me like we were invaders.

“Down the ladder-stair, you three,” Hen said. “Jack, show Kosi where to put her feet. And, Jack? Please take Du. I need to talk with Rokha and Zee. Maybe even cast off and put out into the river.”

Still the same Hen. Good at conveying an emergency without saying so. Well, it had been an emergency the whole time since Jack and I dived through that crowd on Level 1. How could that affect us out here?

Du started struggling in Jack’s arms as soon as we all heard the hatch above us close. She actually whined, something I’d never heard her do before. “Hen! I want Hen!”

“Miz Henry is busy, it sounds like.” Jack cupped a hand around his ear to listen better.

I did the same and listened too. So did Du in the end, thumb still in her mouth.

Two pairs of footsteps arrived running along the plank-way. Splash-ash. Splash-ash. Splash-ash. Two voices. Rokha and Zee speaking in quick short murmured sentences.

“Did you warn the rest of the boats?” Hen said. Her voice as clear as if she stood next to us.

Jack pointed at a vent on the wall among a dozen pictures of all kinds of places and things. With a glance I recognized a couple that Hen brought to the Tween House for me to borrow, the waterfall with trees and plants and mosses surrounding it, and the scary cactus in a sandy desert. Hen’s voice was calm. Zee was nervous, with quick spurts of murmured words.

“Jack,” said Jack’s BigEar. He turned away to talk.

I recognised Rokha’s voice. I looked around the room, like an Aladdin’s cave, with coloured cloths hanging from the walls, over chairs, and one rich red fringed rug draped over a table just the same as the meal-time table in the Tween House.

“My cubby,” Du said, seeing where I looked. She dropped to her knees and crawled under the table. Sat there staring at me through the fringing. Glowering. Finally lying back on a couple of cushions, like a princess. But staring me gone.

And there were the framed prints. A kangaroo. A pair of galahs. Also statuettes, also of animals, and the tableaus. They were the little trays with a scene to take apart and build up again. I looked for the little space elevator.

Hen had so many of the little scenes, I realised now, that some had to be stored in boxes on shelves. And one wall was all shelves. But overflow stuff stood on every surface, at the edges of the floor, on the table. Dress-up things hung from the ceiling and the walls. Loops of calico bunched things and bows of silk frottage tied them to make a passage through for walking among all the gear.

I smiled, despite the flavour of emergency in the air. This room resembled the disaster in Hen’s stories that was always waiting to happen if I didn’t keep the Tween House tidy. Then I saw my absolute favourite object when I was an angry seven. Hen let me borrow it for months.

Du sat up as I crossed the room in two steps and picked up the glass sphere with snow in it. Hen encouraged me to shake up a storm in it whenever I felt stormy, so that snow puffed and twirled and whirled inside it. I cried when she took it home again.

I rolled my eyes. Mine. Mine. Mine. Was that all she could say? “I’m your sister whether you like it or not,” I said.

We went through a door in the left corner of the room, into a grey-lit single-file corridor. The left side of the corridor followed the shape of the hull to a narrow floor.

Jack stopped. “Watch my hand? Here’s the light switch.” He flipped it. The corridor became gold-lit. “Did you two ever meet at your house?” he said instead of telling me the light was powered by the sun or some technical fact.

Good thing he was in front, I was so embarrassed. I fizzed hot all over. Of course Du didn’t know me. We’d never met. And she is only five years old, I reminded myself. You thought you owned Hen then. “No windows,” I said to distract myself.

“Portholes in the room we just left, that are covered with the shawls, and portholes in the kitchen up front. This is the bunkroom, where visitors sleep.” He opened a door beside us. Three sets of double bunks crowded the room. A washable rug outlined the place where people would have to take turns dressing. “Seen it?”

I nodded. No windows, I didn’t say. Just like the Tween House.

“I’m not a visitors,” said Du in a confronted tone of voice.

Jack smiled over Du’s head. I might’ve been able to appreciate it if I wasn’t confronted myself. I didn’t smile back.

Jack shrugged. “This is the bathroom,” he said, opening the next door.

Shower basin toilet. A square of washable tiles to stand on.

“Hen’s room,” he said, indicating that door.

“And mine!” Du said.

Jack frowned at me to warn me not to react. “And finally the kitchen and stair to the front hatch. The layout is back to front to most other boats, Hen told me. She hasn’t told me the reason. Maybe you can get that story from her?”

I shrugged. “You seem to know her as well as I do. Ask her in a different way. She likes people to think for themselves.”

Tuesday, April 3, 2018

A longer instalment than usual gets Kosi and Jack to a kind of safety. It's all surviving aka learning, accepting and adapting ...

Jack’s mystery-making started while I input credits to get a buggy. “Punch in Level 1 for going to the Fetcher House, Kosi. We’ve got to go there first.”

I laughed. “Is this you trying to get used to my name? Is it that unusual?” I teased. “Level 1 or the Fetcher House?” I had my finger hovering.

He frowned. “Yes and yes. You’ll be in my group. I’d better get used to you fast.Both. We’ll need tokens, and the likes of you and me get them at the Fetcher House. The elevator to Ground Level takes off from Level One.”

Oh. “Because it is like a vending machine?” I guessed, trying out some of my learning.

“Human operated, because of all the different things that have to happen to the freight. Some of it goes to the rubbish lighter. Some goes to the recycling centre. Some are grocery orders for the people living on the boats. Parra Seven doesn’t have enough tech, so it’s quicker if a human makes the decisions.”

People living on the boats? I had images in my mind for freighters going from place to place, and boats crossing sea lanes aka ferries and boats, for catching fish aka trawlers. None for people-living-on-boats kind of boats.

The buggy rattled down to the first floor and a voice encouraged us off with a cheery word. “Jacqui and Kosi for the Fetcher House.”

The way inside was filled with a line of khaki-green uniformed soldiers but my mind was on who announced us. “That was L …”

Jack put his arm around my neck, hand over my mouth. “Shh. We don’t normally get crowds down here. Definitely no green-clads.”

That was Lilah’s voice, I had been going to say.

Jack took my hand. He hissed. “Pretend you’re years younger than me.” He tipped a soldier on her elbow. “We’re Fetchers going home to the Fetcher House.”

The line parted. The people being contained inside sagged maybe from tiredness standing up for a while. Who knew how long they’d already been here. They looked unkempt. Hen’s word for un-brushed and unwashed. The space we were in wasn’t a full-sized concourse. There wasn’t a transport well in the centre, I realised. Instead a dark-grey cubical structure with three doors a side squatted in the centre, its doorways guarded by more of the green-clad soldiers.

We trotted into the crowd.

Jack glanced furtively for ways through. I glanced at the soldiers. How many kinds of army were there? Hen never mentioned green-clads. Their prisoners looked at the ground and muttered at each other out of the sides of their mouths. I wouldn’t mind drifting over and hearing what they said.

Jack turned left and dragged me through a squared archway into another even smaller hall. An overflow of people half-filled that area too. Here the green-clads surrounded the unkempt solidly, making a chain of themselves with arms over each other’s shoulders.

by the walls coming closer. Hot inside my clothes. Sweat prickled me. In a minute I would scream. Fight loose. Hen had a lot of solutions for when I was in that panic. I gulped. Hen not here with me now. Give me air. I shut my mouth, breathed deep. One of the things she told me.

Jack repeated his story. “Fetchers going home.” We ducked under and made for a pair of young guards, dressed in washed-out camouflage, standing in front of a wide grey door. “Zee. Bodhi.” Jack nodded. “This is Kosi Lionhair?”

“Miz Bardelote Henry’s older girl?” Zee said like she didn’t want to be overheard either.

Bodhi studied me openly. “Hey there, Fetchers. It’s just about dinner time. What took you so long?”

I nodded. I wasn’t sure what I could say where.

“Could she stay here with you while I get some tokens?” mumbled Jack. “Miz Henry asked to have her to stay overnight until she is processed in tomorrow.”

“I love it. Didn’t I tell you something would turn up?” Zee said at Bodhi with a head gesture towards the crowd. “Incomplete Life Lottery intake. The buzz I’m hearing is that they can’t take off without the full complement. We’re flaunting our licences as a result.” This to Jack and me.

They both wore large colourful badges on their left breast pockets. I had no badge. I put my hand over my pocket. Neither did Jack have a badge.

Zee talked into her BigEar mouthpiece with it almost pressed against her lips.

The door opened enough to let through two adult guard-women whose shirts bore numerous badges. The tallest of two said, “Good work, Zee. You’re with me, taking these children to Miz Henry’s house.”

Jack took my hand again when she said ‘children’ like it was a signal. The second woman took Zee’s place. Zee took a rear position while the first woman walked between me and the green-clads. Jack was on my other side.

It was only five paces to some of the same doors as in the cubical place in the other hall. The woman gestured her head at the green-clad soldier guarding the door and she stepped aside. “Jacqui?” she said.

Jack pressed a button. I squeezed his hand, asking. “Elevator,” he mumbled. I nodded. Had watched numerous film clips of elevators over the years.

Ping. The elevator arrived at Level 1. Its door slid into the wall. We all hustled into a little room. The door slid shut with Zee pressing a similar button on the inside jamb.

“Take any of the green-clads to Ground Level yet?” the woman said.

“Good day to you too, Rokha,” a man said. “No. All safe down there. You expecting to go up again?” He stood in a rear corner, dressed in mid-grey, the same colour as the walls. Well camouflaged, I thought in Hen’s voice to cover that I hadn’t noticed him, a man. My face got hot just the same.

Everyone around me relaxed a bit. “Not today, I think,” Rokha said.

“Wise move. I was intending to stall everything midway,” the man said. “I drive them, girlie,” he said into my blushing face.

I nodded. “Thank you.” The elevator crept down, is the only word for the sensation of progressing in millimetres. The elevator man stared out of what I now saw was a long narrow window by his side. He had a remote in his hand.

“Water is up to the boards,” the man said. “Can the kids manage? Try not to splash down.”

“Not a problem,” Rokha said.

The sensation of stopping and starting stopped. The driver pushed through us and did something to the doors and went back to his place. He’d kinked them inward, and folded them aside. A narrow space had opened up. A cold breeze roiled among us. Everybody had something on them that fluttered. My hair lifted to remind me that I was as strong as a lion.

“Water over the boards,” Zee said. She kneeled in front of the doorway. “Jacqui, you’re next. Rokha will catch you.”

Jack disappeared. Thump-clop. Softer that time. From being caught, I assumed. My turn. I sat down. Wanted badly to see where I was going. Looked down. Rokha’s and Jack’s faces. Water as far as I could see, and over the boardwalk they stood on.

“Lie down and roll over, Kosi,” Zee said. She grabbed my wrists when I started to slide. “Good kid. You’ve done some of the tumbles.”

I hung full length before Rokha grabbed me around my lower legs. I made myself a pole. She let me down easy, hand over hand up my body, and set me on my feet. Hardly any sound.

“You two start,” she said to Jack. Keep to the middle.” She turned to Zee’s legs dangling down.

“Let’s go,” Jack said.

On three sides of us were the tall cliffs of our buildings. The rest was so much sky that I dizzied and stumbled. Splash. Wet to the knee and elbow. At that level, a row of boat-hulls both sides of the walkway stopped me seeing the rest of the water.

“First time I was properly outside I did the same,” Jack said. “Hen’s boat is at the end. I think it’s urgent we get there. We’ll wade. Less splashing.”

-->

We waded, meaning we slid our feet over the boards through the water. We passed eight boats on the right-hand side. All shapes, several sizes. None were as big as my imagined boats. The plank-way was awash.